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Tag: Panda3D

I have just completed a project, by which I downloaded, compiled and installed the 3D-game / 3D-application development software named Panda3D, on the powerful Linux laptop I name ‘Klystron’. That laptop is not to be confused with the less-powerful Web-server I name ‘Phoenix’.

This game-development kit started out years ago as a much-simpler project from Carnegie-Mellon University, which at the time I called a toy. But as it stands today, the level of sophistication and power available through Panda3D has grown tremendously. It is no longer a toy by any means, and is also one of the few game-dev platforms I know of, that can be scripted directly in Python.

One of the new features that make it interesting, is the ability to use Bullet Physics, especially since the simpler ODE (Open Dynamics Engine), game-physics engine, is broken on some platforms.

Another new feature is the support for a browser plug-in, that will allow games etc. to be deployed as Web-content, as long as the browser has the run-time plug-in installed. The actual embedded applet will then take the form of a ‘.p3d’ File.

One aspect of compiling this software that takes some getting used to, is that its python-based make-commands accept an ‘–everything’ parameter, which essentially tells the make-script to find all the relevant dependencies on the local computer, and then to configure the version of Panda3D we are compiling, to link only to the dependencies which were found, thereby either including some features or leaving them out.

I found that my only way to process that information, was to run the make command a first time as a dummy-run, and then to interrupt it. At the top of its build-log, it will show the power-user which libraries / dependencies it did not find, as if the intention was not to include those. After having interrupted this first run, I next went through my package-manager and installed all the packages named, which I felt might add some value to my build of Panda3D.

And so, after I checked out the GIT version of the software to a folder named ‘~/Programs/panda3d’ , and after ‘cd’ -ing to that directory, I felt that the following recipes were of use to me: